


Christmas Ficlets

by skuls



Series: Emily AU [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, christmas fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: so this is the first in a series of christmas ficlets set post-ufot. slight spoilers for per manum.





	1. Christmas 1999

**Author's Note:**

> so this is the first in a series of christmas ficlets set post-ufot. slight spoilers for per manum.

“I want to have a baby,” she says suddenly.

Mulder looks up at her in shock, and immediately looks down to check on Emily, see if she’s still asleep. Newly five and having grown exponentially in the past year, she looks considerably less small than the last time they were on a plane - on the way back from New York - with her limbs tossed carelessly across the airplane seat and red-gold hair strewn over her face in sleep. He pushes some hair behind her ear mindlessly, and Scully is reminded of why she wants him to be the father of her children.

He turns back to face her and takes her hand, rubbing her knuckles with his index fingers. “You want to have a baby,” he repeats, more in acknowledgment then anything else. She can’t read his reaction.

She nods, suddenly embarrassed. “I mean, it's not… you know I love Emily more than anything. And I'm more than happy for this, our chance to raise her; I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world… but I hate that we missed those first few years of her growing up.”

He laughs quietly. “Em told me she was asking Santa for a sister this year.”

“A sister, huh.” Scully smiles to herself. “Why didn't she mention it to me?”

“She thought you'd say no, like you did to the guinea pig.”

“A baby is a little different from a guinea pig, Mulder.”

“I know that. I’m just saying that you saying no to the guinea pig made no sense from my perspective. You want another dog, and what I don't understand is how one little furry thing is different from another.”

“A dog is very different from a _rat_ that I would probably end up taking care of…” she starts, the beginning of a speech she is tired of giving.

He chuckles, holds up his hands in a surrendering motion. “Hey, I'm not arguing with you, Scully.” He takes her hand again earnestly. “My point was that Emily wants this.”

“That is important.” She tilts her head in question: _what do you want?_

He nudges her thumb with his. “And I want this,” he says, quietly but meaningfully.

She grins like an idiot. “You want this?” She wants to kiss him here on the airplane in front of everyone.

He nods, grinning just as goofily and brushing his mouth along her knuckles. “I want this.”

She squeezes his hand, stomach turning with something like nervousness and excitement melded together. They could do this, they could really do this.

///

Thanksgiving at Bill’s house goes fairly well, all things considered. Bill gives Mulder enough suspicious looks to keep the tension thick, but he manages to keep his mouth shut in terms of insults. (It probably helps that Emily, generally clingy by nature, gets clingier when she notices Bill’s dubious looks.) Mrs. Scully has been considerably more welcoming to Mulder in the months following his unconventional brain surgery over the summer, having been around for a large part of his recovery period. Tara seems awkward at worst, and sweet and welcoming at best. No appearance by Charlie, but that’s more or less normal. In terms of Scully family holidays, it’s not the worst Scully’s ever experienced.

Emily spends a lot of the time playing with Matthew, holding his chubby hands as he toddles through the house or putting together puzzles on the living room floor. Scully finds herself smiling unexpectedly when she sees them together. Mulder notices, too; he smiles and winds an arm around her waist.

On their last day in San Diego, the three of them drive to Emily’s old house before heading to the airport. An unofficial tradition, she supposes. It’s still eerie for her to go back; she can still hear the echo of her sister’s voice in her ears. Emily almost looks more like the ghost of her sister when they come here.

In the backseat, Emily twists their cross in her hands and watches the passing neighborhood houses solemnly. She is quiet for the first time in hours. When they arrive, she holds Scully’s hand as they stand on the sidewalk in front of the house, a strange parallel to their first interaction here. Mulder watches from the car silently. Emily looks up at the house for a long minute before finally saying, “It looks different. Do you think it looks different?”

Not particularly, but childhood memories are a malleable thing. She shrugs. “I dunno. What do you think, do you want to see if they’ll let us go inside like last year?”

Emily shakes her head seriously. “I don’t wanna go back in there.”

She lets go of Scully’s hand quickly, like the ghosts of Roberta and Marshall Sim are watching in disapproval. Scully thinks she understands. She buckles Emily into her carseat and climbs into the driver’s seat - she and Mulder negotiate driving shifts.

“I’m gonna miss Matthew,” Emily says on the way to the airport. “Can we visit again?”

“Of course, sweetie,” Scully says. She looks over at Mulder before adding, “It seemed like you guys were having fun playing together.”

“Uh-huh. He’s cute.” Emily smiles, almost to herself, jiggling her foot against the car door. Beside her, she can feel the warmth of Mulder’s smile.

///

Mulder holds her hand while they wait for Dr. Parenti to come back, which feels absurd but also like a necessity, like his hand is anchoring her to Earth. There had been hand-drawn Christmas decorations and carols playing in the waiting room. _What Child Is This,_ which is even more absurd. Do they plan these things?

Dr. Parenti comes back, tells them, “There's a good chance to get you pregnant”, and something loosens in Scully's chest, like a bird flying away. Mulder squeezes her hand tightly when he tells him they can start soon. It feels like a miracle, she can't help but think.

“What are we going to do if this works, Scully?” Mulder asks on the ride home.

She rolls her eyes. “We'll have a baby, Mulder.” Her fingertips are unconsciously pressed to her abdomen in some strange gesture, some homemaking attempt.

“No, I mean about everything else,” he says. “I have the slightest feeling your mother will murder me.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Mulder. My mom likes you.”

“Maybe we should get married,” he says casually. “Emily wants us to, you know.”

“What a romantic proposal,” she says sarcastically, crossing her ankles.

“Well, it just seems a little ridiculous to have different addresses and be having a child together. Even if I do spend most nights at your place.”

She won't look at him because she still has a hard time looking at him in these moments, when her heart is pounding so hard in her chest that she feels like a nervous, sweaty-handed teenager again. “I'll make you a deal, Mulder,” she says carefully. “If this happens, you can move in permanently.”

She's still not looking at him, but she can sense his delight at her words. “We might even have to get a new place, together, you know,” he says happily. “One with three bedrooms.”

Her stomach lurches without nervousness. Any trace of fear is gone, and only excitement remains. She can't stop smiling.

///

The next few weeks pass in a frenzied blur. Scully refuses to drink any coffee, despite the small recommended amounts, which Mulder claims affects her mood. There are a few somewhat disastrous shopping trips, the one that they bring Emily on to buy Mrs. Scully a present escalating at the pet shop in lieu of a black-and-white guinea pig. Emily doesn't want a tree in a repeat of last year, so Mulder stashes the presents at his apartment until Christmas.

Scully comes home one day after an appointment to find Mulder and Emily asleep on the couch, Emily using Mulder fully as a pillow with her head on his shoulder and her feet hanging off the couch. Mulder has an arm wrapped around her shoulder as if to protect her from malicious outside forces. A lump forms in her throat, and she swallows against it with her impending smile.

The terror of everything that has happened over the past year - New York, going on the run briefly, Mulder’s brain surgery, even the bank robbery that Emily still doesn't know about, that they still dream the repressed memories of - has never completely left them. Emily has a tendency to pad into their bedroom at least one night a week when she has nightmares, wordlessly crawling between them and burying her face in the pillows, snuggling up close to one of them for security. And she and Mulder aren't much better, have a tendency to wake up terrified and reaching for the other. If she’d ever thought about it, she’d never expected to be the mother who lets her children sleep in bed with her, but she finds herself needing it just as much as Emily does - the reassurance that they are all still safe. They are all still scarred, fear lodged under their skin and embedded in their bones.

Emily wakes up at the creak of the floorboards, blinking sleepily up at her mother. “Hi, Mommy,” she says, scrambling down to throw her arms around Scully's waist.

“Hey, sweetie,” she whispers, hugging Emily back tightly and leaning down to kiss her head. Suddenly, all at once, she wants to tell her about the IVF. How she might have a little sibling by next Christmas. She wants to see her daughter’s face light up with excitement - even though she knows that excitement won't last forever, she remembers being an older sibling. But she wants that moment of mutual joy, the thought of three becoming four.

But then she remembers the success rate, like a cold slap in the face. She can’t tell her, not until everything's for certain.

///

Her appointment is the day before Christmas Eve. Mulder distracts Emily sufficiently with a marathon of claymation Christmas movies while Scully goes to the appointment. After everything is over, she stands in the cold, bland hallway of the doctor's office, not ready to go home. She presses her forehead against the too-white wall and presses her lips together to hold in a sob. _This is ridiculous,_ she tells herself. _You knew the statistics before you started. You have Emily, and you love her, and that's enough._ She doesn't want to tell Mulder. It’s silly to fear telling him, but she does. She could probably pretend this never happened if it was just her - before Emily, she’d taught herself to live in a state of almost constant denial - but having to explain to someone else makes it real, solidifies it.

She goes home and he's in bed waiting for her. She thinks about just crawling in bed and curling herself around him, like this’ll all go away if she just goes to sleep, but he wakes up as she takes her next step into the room. “Scully?” he says groggily. “I must have dozed off. I was waiting for you to get back.” He blinks owlishly at her, seems to take in her expression for the first time and his face transforms in response. “It didn't take, did it?” he says softly, knowingly.

She knows if she tries to say anything, she'll cry, so she just shakes her head silently, holds her breath like that'll keep her from falling apart, like she won't shatter at the wind.

He stands and wraps his arms around her, kissing her forehead tenderly. “Never give up on a miracle,” he whispers, and she clenches her hands in his shirt to keep him close.

They crawl into bed eventually, and she lets him hold her tightly, his mouth pressed to her neck. She needs it. Emily shows up around one in the morning, and Scully pulls her against her side, buries her nose in her shampoo-scented hair and swallows against the lump in her throat.

///

“So what do you think?” Scully asks over the end credits of _It's A Wonderful Life_. “Any better than last year?”

Emily wrinkles her nose skeptically. “The end part when he was running around everywhere was cool, I guess,” she says begrudgingly. “But the beginning’s still boring.”

Mulder nudges her. “That's an improvement from last year, though.”

“I'll take it,” Scully says with an exaggerated sigh that makes Emily giggle. “What do you think, you want to read _Twas The Night Before Christmas_ before bed?”

Emily eagerly grabs the copy that had been Scully's as a child, which Maggie had given to her last Christmas. “Can I read it this year, Mommy?”

She makes it halfway through, going through the easy words effortlessly and requesting help on the longer ones. Scully catches Mulder's eye over her head in the middle of the poem, and he smiles at her, and she thinks _this is enough,_ with her daughter tucked into her side and her partner next to them. _This is enough._

///

Emily is more than satisfied with her stack of books, lies sprawled out on the rug on her stomach after the gift buzz has settled. Scully thinks briefly, wistfully, of how much longer the present exchange would go if there was another child to open presents. That'll never happen now. Maybe they can adopt, but that process is expensive and would take years and who knows how Emily would feel about it. She might bring it up later, when the pain has subsided. Mulder thinks he successfully hid the tear tracks on his cheeks the next morning.

Mulder is holding her hand on the couch and _A Christmas Carol_ is playing in the background and Emily watches the scene with Jacob Marley with great interest. (She is fascinated by ghosts.) Scully squeezes his hand. “Were you going to go home today?” she asks quietly.

Mulder looks over at her, a little bemused. “Wasn't planning on it,” he says. “What’re you thinking, Scully?”

She squeezes his hand again. “Don't go home. Stay here.”

He looks relieved. “Of course, if you want me to.”

He still hasn't put it together. “I was thinking of something a little more permanent,” she says wryly.

Mulder blinks in astonishment. “Are you asking me to move in?”

She pokes his knee playfully. “That was my intention, yes.”

“Scully, are you sure?” he whispers, like he can't believe it.

“Emily?” she calls. “How would you like it if Mulder moved in?”

Emily looks away from Marley’s rattling chains eagerly. “I'd love it!” she says eagerly.

Scully turns back to Mulder, satisfied smirk on her face. “There you go.”

He kisses her suddenly, chilled fingers in her hair and on her cheek. “I love you,” he whispers into her mouth, a declaration that is almost rare - they have a habit of only saying it in desperate situations.

Emily makes the customary gagging sound that kids make around their parents being affectionate, and climbs up in Mulder's lap. “It's about time, you know,” she says. “Kids’ parents normally live together unless they're divorced or something.”

“Glad I could help your reputation, kid.” Mulder kisses her head, tickling her side until she giggles wildly.

Emily grabs a handful of Scully's satin pajama shirt and tugs her closer. “So when are you getting married?” she whispers conspiratorially.

Mulder laughs and Scully leans into them. She is happy, happier than she has been in a long time. She does not think about the IVF.


	2. Christmas 2000

She's felt sick on and off these past weeks, growing dizzy and nauseous and eventually having to lean over the sink the night before, but she never expected this. Never thought she'd actually faint at work.

One minute, she's standing by a festoon of Christmas decorations in the hallway (the FBI has Christmas decorations?) and arguing the authenticity of Mulder's toxic slime theory, and the next, her vision is spotted and her legs are weak, the room spinning as she falls and darkness falling like a curtain.

Mulder catches her clumsily before she hits the floor. When she comes to, his hand is on her cheek, thumb moving over her cheekbone, and his eyes are filled with worry. “Scully,” he says frantically.

“Mulder, what happened?” she whispers dizzily, disoriented, unsure of why she is on the floor in Mulder’s arms. _(Damnit, we talked about being affectionate at work_ , she thinks at first, irritably, and then figures out by the pounding in her head that something is wrong.)

“You fainted.” He looks like he's on the verge of falling apart, hugs her against him desperately.

Another agent hovers awkwardly, asking, “Is she okay?”

“Call an ambulance,” he snaps.

“Mulder, I'm okay,” she says, touching his wrist gently, right over his pulse point. “I’m okay.”

He swallows, smoothing the hair away from her face. “No, you're not,” he says, almost firmly.

///

They wait for her blood work to come back in an emotionless little room. It’s too white. Hospitals are always too white, like they’re meant to be devoid of color or emotion, but hospitals are full of emotion. Some of her favorite memories with Mulder are in a hospital. (Her first good memory with Emily is as well; she’d come to Emily’s room where she was recovering, and had said, When you’re feeling better, you can come home with me, and received a tentative green-Jello-smile in return.) It’s almost bizarre, the way they work, but they’ve always been blatantly tragic like that.

Mulder sits on the edge of the bed and holds her hand like a lifeline. Scully tries not to worst-case-scenario. She tries to focus on Emily and Mulder, thinks about Christmas morning in a couple of weeks, Emily clutching Mulder’s hand excitedly and jumping up and down at the stack of presents, her nephew's sticky fingers when he hugs her hello, the warm familiarity of her mother's house. Her mind wanders treacherously back to being sick again, and her stomach twists painfully.

Mulder seems to sense her panic and squeezes her fingers, murmuring, “We’re going to be okay.” But she doesn’t exactly believe him. His voice shakes too much and he is holding her too tightly. He turns and kisses her cheek so gently that she thinks she might break, shatter on impact. She holds her breath, screws her eyes shut briefly.

The doctor taps on the door politely before coming in. She's smiling, but Scully can't tell if it's genuine or clinical. “Well, Dana, I have your blood work results.”

Mulder compresses her fingers to a point where she fears permanent damage. “What is it?” she asks carefully, trying not to let fear leak into her voice.

“You're pregnant.”

Her head rushes. She feels dizzy again, like she might faint again despite being seated. Mulder's grip on her hand loosens, probably in surprise, and she refuses to look at him. “I'm… pregnant?” she repeats in disbelief. “But that’s… that's not possible.”

“I know it clashes with your records, but there's been past cases of this. It's not entirely abnormal, and while we're at a loss to explain it, your blood work confirms it.” The doctor sounds like Mulder trying to explain why spontaneous human combustion is a plausible theory. “You're about five weeks along,” she adds, beaming at them.

Scully slips her hand out of Mulder's, and laces her hands together in her lap in an attempt at composure “I… do you think we could arrange to have an ultrasound? Just to make sure?” She can't believe this, she really can't believe this, but she wants to so bad. She wants it to be true.

“I think that'd be best, but I'm sure everything is fine. You're in good health, Dana. I'll see if we have a room ready.”

As soon as the door closes, she twists to look up at Mulder. The look in his eyes can only be described as amazement. “Scully,” he whispers breathlessly, in a tone usually reserved for Bigfoot or UFO sightings, that sends shivers scaling her spine, and she reaches for him without thinking. “This is what we wanted.” He presses a kiss to her nose, fingers tangling in her hair.

Her head's still spinning. She can’t quite get a grasp on what’s going on. “I’m pregnant,” she whispers, hugging Mulder to her. “Mulder.”

“Scully,” he says into her hair. “Scully, we did it.”

She laughs, gripping handfuls of his shirt. “You told me not to give up, and you were right. You were right, Mulder.”

He laughs as well, holding her tighter. “Had to have happened at some point.”

“You’ve been right about plenty of stuff,” she chides playfully, nudging him.

“Nothing as important as this,” he says, and she tears up a little. She has to remind herself that this is really happening. _We’re having a baby_ , she thinks. _We’re having a baby._

///

By some sheer miracle (and Scully sees the irony in the terminology), they manage to leave the doctor’s office in time to get Emily from kindergarten. She lets Mulder drive - she’s still in a haze. She can’t stop looking at the ultrasound pictures, touching the baby’s miniscule image gently.

“We’ll have some things to talk about,” she says as they pull into the car rider line.

“I know,” Mulder says. “I know, but we have time for all that. We have plenty of time.”

“Eight months,” she reminds him teasingly.

“That’s enough time to do the _truly_ terrifying thing and tell your family.”

“Mulder,” she complains, hitting his shoulder. He ducks away, laughing. “Do you want to tell Emily today?” she asks, more seriously.

He chews his lip, nods. “I think it’d be a good idea. She’ll be excited.”

“That’s my hope,” Scully agrees, fingertips brushing her abdomen gingerly. Emily hasn’t brought up a little sibling since a year ago; her hope is that her demeanor towards the whole thing hasn’t changed.

Almost twenty minutes later (the car line is every parent’s hell, Mulder has declared more than once), Emily climbs in the car, metal lunch box banging the door. “Hi, Mommy! Hi, Mulder!” she chirps, passing Scully a paper likeness of Santa Claus. “We made Santa in school today.”

“It’s really pretty, sweetie,” she says, studying the crayoned face dutifully.

“Have a good day?” Mulder asks, steering them around the curved sidewalk.

“Uh-huh. We sang Christmas carols in music class.” Emily is the type of person who can talk endlessly about things - Scully's theory is that she's been spending too much time around Mulder - so they listen to her rattle on about the various ends and outs of her day, exchanging smiles occasionally.

Emily seems to figure out that something is up when Mulder stops for a milkshake on the way home. (Scully raises her eyebrows at him, but says nothing.) The way she reacts when they ask if they can talk to her is a confirmation. “Did I do something bad?” she asks suspiciously, swirling her straw through her milkshake.

“No, sweetie, of course not,” Scully says immediately.

“Unless there’s something we should know about,” Mulder adds. _He almost has the scolding part of being a parent down_ , Scully thinks fondly. He has a habit of being extremely awkward in those situations, usually looking to Scully for authority.

“Nope.” Emily looks relieved at her reprieve, climbing into the chair across from their spot on the couch. It feels too much like the time they told her they were together. Scully is almost as nervous now as she was then, which still seems absurd.

There is no good way to segue into this, so Scully just takes a deep breath and plunges into it. “Emily, what would you think about having little brother or sister?”

Emily’s face lights up in a way that’s reminiscent of the fireworks they’d watched on the Fourth of July. “Am I gonna have one?” she says, elated, practically bouncing.

Scully sniffs unexpectedly, unable to stop the smile. For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t want to. “Yeah, we’re gonna have a baby.”

Emily grins, sliding down from her chair and running over to the couch. “Can I see it?”

Mulder pulls out the ultrasound photos and presents them to Emily. “The baby’s right here,” he says, pointing.

Emily stares, nose wrinkled in confusion. “That doesn’t look like a baby,” she says finally.

“That’s what I thought,” Mulder says in a stage whisper. “But don’t worry, it will.”

“It’s in your tummy, right?” Scully nods, and Emily bends down to inspect her stomach. “Is it gonna kick?”

“At some point,” Scully says.

She feels like crying out of pure happiness when Emily places her hand tentatively over the baby and smiles. She pats gently, then reaches up and hugs her mother around the neck, clambering up to sit between them on the couch. “When’s it gonna be here?” she whispers conspiratorially, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder.

Scully laughs, kissing her daughter on the temple. “In the summer.”

“Oh.” She considers this, tipping her head. “So does that mean we can’t go to the beach this year?”

“C’mon, Em, would you rather have a vacation or a little sibling?” Mulder asks, tickling the bottom of Emily’s bare feet until she giggles wildly.

“Sibling,” she gasps, voice bubbly from laughing.

Mulder’s eyes reflect the light, a fitting metaphor for what he must be feeling, as he softly replies, “That’s what I thought.” Scully smiles. She can’t remember the last time she was this happy.

///

The next two weeks follow in a blissful, sugar-rush blur. Scully tells her mother over lunch one day, Emily wriggling impatiently beside her, and Mrs. Scully hugs her and tells her that she’s happy for them and cries a little. (She also not-so-subtly looks at Scully’s ring finger, which Scully blatantly ignores. Emily’s suggested it at least five times since they told her, and she’s partially taken it off of the table out of pure spite.) Emily writes a list of baby names down in crayon, color coding it and misspelling at least half of them.

Scully spends at least three mornings sick. Mulder crouches beside her on the tiled floor of her bathroom, a move that is scarily reminiscent of the first Tooms case, and puts a cool cloth on the back of her neck. “You know it’s only going to get worse, right?” she asks, hand clenched around the edge of the counter.

He kisses her forehead. “We’ll be okay. We’ve gone through worse, you know.”

“Name one thing.” She pokes his side.

“Antarctica.”

“Point taken.”

Emily seems just as sympathetic. She runs to the kitchen to get her hot chocolate (saying “It always makes me feel better!” as a counterpart to Scully’s gentle protesting), and spills about half of it on the floor in her eagerness. She appreciates the sentiment more than anything, and she tells Emily so.

It snows on Christmas, starting sometime around noon, and picking up in the evening. Emily falls asleep in Mulder’s lap on the couch. “Don’t even think about carrying her to bed,” Mulder says sleepily but sternly.

“Mm, I wasn’t.” She tugs the blanket over to her side of the couch, and curls more securely into her corner. “This is nice,” she says softly.

Mulder blinks at her groggily. “What?”

“This. Being here on the couch. Emily. You. Having a baby on the way.” She turns her face against his shoulder, adding a drowsy, “I love you, you know.”

“Just call me Han Solo,” he teases, and she slugs him. “I love you, too,” he says. “And Emily, and the baby, and this… this is nice.”

“Eloquently said,” she says, burrowing into his side. “You have such a way with words, Mulder.”

“Hmm,” he mutters. “I’m sleepy. Not at my best.”

She kisses his collarbone, and he wraps an arm around her in response, hand coming around to land on her abdomen.


	3. Christmas 2001-2002

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should note that this was originally just supposed to be the second half but i couldn’t resist a dose of angst

_2001_

William cries almost all night on Christmas Eve, which seems to align with the consistent sharp pang in Scully’s chest. Emily blinks blearily, sadly up at her from the doorway to her bedroom on the third time she has to get up. She tries to smile, says, “Santa can’t come if you can’t go to sleep, sweetie.”

“I don’t care about Santa,” Emily replies sadly. She disappears back into her room, shutting the door sharply before Scully can call out to her.

She hates the new apartment with a passion. It may be bigger, and Mulder’s inheritance may cover the rent, but it’s unbearably lonely. She wants somewhere that he was at some point, some echo of Mulder still in their lives. She paces around William’s room, staring at the walls that Emily and Mulder had painted together and made a spectacular mess of, and tries to soothe him despite not being able to soothe herself. “Shh, it’s okay,” she whispers to her son. “Your mom’s here.” _Your dad should be here._

It’s been months since he left the apartment at her insistence, months since she’d had to go to Emily’s room and tell her why Mulder had to leave. (She hadn’t let him wait until Emily was awake, had known he’d never leave if she did.) _It’s not fair_ , Emily had whimpered into her pillow (because she'd refused to let her mother hug her, like it was her fault Mulder was gone), and Scully had no trouble agreeing to that sentiment. It wasn’t fair that Mulder had to leave three days after his son was born, wasn’t fair that they were always in danger, wasn’t fair that they never got very long to be happy, that there was always a catch. Wasn’t fair, isn’t fair, would never be fair, their lives. Mulder hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t let go of her shirt until she’d pried his hands off, kissed him sadly and handed him his suitcase. (Maybe it was her fault a little, maybe Emily was right to refuse to hug her, but she'd done it so they'd stay alive. This was the only way. She could live without him for a few months, maybe a year, but she couldn’t live without him forever.)

_It’s not forever_ , she’d promised her daughter, tipping her chin up so that she’d look at her. _We’re gonna see him again._ She couldn’t tell Emily what they’d figured out - that the four of them were never going to be safe until they disappeared. So Mulder was leaving now because of the threat on his life, and was going to find a place that was safe to bring a newborn. Then they’d follow him.

Emily had finally hugged her, flown at her and banged her forehead against Scully's collarbone, and they'd both cried. The empty space where Mulder should be had just sunk in, for Scully, and it was fucking terrifying.

Four months later and still nothing. They communicate infrequently through inconspicuous emails. _Nothing yet_ , almost all of Mulder’s emails read (in code). He asks about the kids more. Her replies are always longer, and she almost always cries when she writes them. _I want you to be here for Christmas_ , she’d wanted to say in the last one. Tomorrow, they will go to her mother’s, and Bill will interrogate her on where Mulder is, and Emily and Matthew will probably play in the snow, and everyone will want to hold the baby. She has an unconscious fear of letting William or Emily too far out of her sight, especially since the night he was born (a blur of unfamiliar faces and splitting pain, Mulder’s fingers curled around her ankle and his shouts to the strangers echoing off the walls of the strange Georgia house and William’s cries). It’s almost hard for her to let Emily go to school every day - she was relieved when Christmas vacation started.

She paces the unfamiliar floors and rocks her son and wishes for a Christmas miracle, the sappy ending to the kind of movie she’d hate, where Mulder comes through the door and kisses her climatically and holds his son for the first time in months and everything’s okay. Nothing happens, of course. That’s what she gets for indulging herself by fantasizing.

Emily pads into the living room around six, blinking muzzily. “Hi, Will,” she says in the soft voice she reserves for her brother, sitting next to them on the couch. “Mom, can I hold him?”

She’s gotten good at this over the past few months. Scully lowers her son into the cradle of her daughter’s arms, and heads to the kitchen. “I’m going to make some coffee,” she says. “Do you want some hot chocolate?”

“Uh-huh.” Emily eyes the presents in the corner, but shows no inclination towards them. She hums softly to William. “Do we have to go to Grandma’s?” she asks when Scully comes back into the room and sits beside her. She takes a sip of cocoa and flinches - too hot.

“I think we should,” Scully says carefully, taking William back and placing him on her lap. He gurgles and tugs on her finger, oblivious and happy. “Why don’t you want to?”

“I don’t know. I wanna stay here.” Her daughter’s pout is perceptible, leaning against the couch wearily. “I miss Mulder.”

How has she gotten to a point where she barely knows how to be a parent without him? She kisses Emily’s forehead and smooths her tangled hair. “I miss him, too. And I know family gatherings can be… tiring. But I’m sure we’ll all feel better after spending some time with other people.” This is a lie, and she hates that it is a lie.

Emily bends down so that she’s nose to nose with William. He squeals and grabs for her nose. “See, Will doesn’t want to go, either,” she says smugly, tickling his stomach and looking up at her mother hopefully.

Scully pokes her in the side. “Nice try.”

“Worth it.” She props her feet up on the coffee table. “I love Grandma and Matthew, but I don’t want Uncle Bill to be mean about Mulder.”

Scully taps her feet in a wordless scold, and she takes them down. “I don’t, either,” she says. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t, okay?”

Emily makes a face. “Why is Uncle Bill so mean sometimes? I bet William would never do that.”

She loves how much Emily adores her brother. She’d be disappointed that he wasn’t a little sister like she’d hoped at first, but she suspects the whole tragedy of the situation has made them closer. “He’s not mean, just… protective.” And overbearing and kind of an asshole sometimes, but still her brother. “You’ll probably understand someday when Will’s older. And he wishes things could be easier for us, too. He just blames Mulder for everything.”

“Well, he shouldn’t, cause it’s not his fault,” Emily says fiercely.

“You’re right.” She kisses Emily’s auburn head, hugs her from the side (as much she can with a wriggling baby on her lap). “Tell you what. If you can survive a couple of hours at Grandma’s, we can come back here and stay up late and watch a Christmas movie if you want.”

Emily’s eyes light up. “And get pizza?”

That’s the least she can do. “Sure. Except for William; he’ll have to have baby food.”

Emily sighs exaggeratedly. “Okaaaay.” She leans up and kisses Scully on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom.”

Emily switched to calling her Mom during this school year, and Scully has no idea if it’s because of the kids at school or Mulder leaving. She’s not sure how she feels about it yet. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. Merry Christmas.”

She hands William off to Emily and hands them each a present before going to get the newspaper. When she opens the door, a package sits on the front mat. It reads _Dana, Emily, and William Scully_ in a familiar scrawl across the top.

Despite the danger, despite the fact that it is no substitute for the man who sent it, despite the jump in her stomach, the questions of _was he here, why wouldn’t he let me know, why wouldn’t he come in_ , Scully smiles.

///

_2002_

There is some kind of broken routine to living in hotels. They've been in this one for almost a month.  It's near the ocean, which makes Scully happy.

Emily slips out of the room early in the morning, as soon as the continental breakfast opens, and returns with Styrofoam plates of too-sticky waffles (she readily enjoys syrup as a rule). Avoid people as much as possible is the first, unofficial rule to being on the run, and Emily understands that at the very least. She doesn’t understand why they have to run, and Mulder prematurely hopes she never will, although he knows there will eventually be questions - if not now, then someday.

William apparently has inherited his father’s insomnia, whining from his portable crib around the same time Emily gets up. Mulder likes to think he’s learned to be as soothing as Scully in the months they’ve been on the run. The three of them eat on the musty hotel sheets, Mulder cutting up his waffles for him and William wiping his sticky fingers on the bed.

“Have you heard anything from Mom yet?” Emily asks, motioning to the burner phone on the tables between the beds.

“Not yet,” Mulder says, trying to ignore the worry embedded beneath his skin. Scully left to meet with Reyes and Doggett a week ago. She’d warned him she would be minimizing contact, in case they were being tracked somehow, but going cold turkey like this is too much, what with everything that’s happened.

The news reports about _Dangerous Fugitive!_ and _Where Is Former Partner Of Fox Mulder?_ have stopped, but the fear of being caught is still there. If Mulder gets caught, he’ll undoubtedly be sentenced to death again. If Scully gets caught, she’ll get prison at the least, and probably a death sentence as well. The Consortium leaves no evidence, and William and Emily will undoubtedly be mowed down in the process, be taken away despite any effort on Maggie’s part. It can’t happen. They’ve taken as many precautions as possible - the burner phones, the crappy hotels. Scully dyes her hair brown every month and Mulder keeps a beard. The most they’ve done to change the kids’ appearances is to cut Emily’s hair to her chin. Skinner had promised to keep Emily and William out of the news as much as possible, but their pictures have popped up on the news more than once. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way - he was supposed to have found somewhere safe and then Scully would’ve taken the kids and disappeared. But what he’d found - he couldn’t let it go. He hates himself for not ignoring it now more than ever.

There is a series of Christmas specials on TV, and William crawls in Mulder’s lap to watch. His heart swells a little at this (which is ironic, considering they’re watching _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_ ). He’s barely been around for any of his son’s life, and he hates that he’s missed so much. William has warmed to him at what seems like an incredible rate (although it probably helps that Emily has been so receptive of him). He presses a kiss to his son’s tousled hair.

Emily is sprawled out on the other bed, coloring. She purses her lips in concentration and twists her cross in her hands in a motion that decidedly makes Mulder think of Scully. “Do you think Mom would like a picture for Christmas?” she asks.

“I think she’d love it.”

“Do you think she’ll be back for Christmas?”

“Da.” William tugs impatiently on Mulder’s t-shirt. “Mama?”

He’s never been a very optimistic person as a rule, but now hardly seems like the time for pessimism. “I’m sure she’ll be here,” he says. _I hope._

///

Reunions seem to be the one thing they do well as a family. After breaking him out of prison, Scully had driven them to a dimly-lit rest area where Maggie had been waiting with the kids. Emily had come running and lept up to hug him, and she’d been a little too big for that but he’d caught her anyway. Scully had placed William in his arms. _Family_ , he’d remembered, just then. _I have a family_.

Scully’s return to their stuffy hotel room is no different. Emily scrambles across the stained carpet to hug her, and William reaches for her with excitement, and Mulder kisses her as soon as she has the door closed. She smiles, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Missed you guys,” she says, dropping a kiss on William’s head.

“Oh, really?” he teases.

“Really.” Scully tugs Emily into their cluster with one arm around her shoulders, and she giggles and hugs her mother again.

They don’t talk about how worried they were that she wouldn’t be coming back, and she doesn’t mention how panicked she was that they’d be gone when she got back because she wasn’t there to protect them. Instead, she just burrows closer, saying, “It’s chilly outside.”

William shrieks at his mother’s chilled skin. “Co? Mama?”

“It’s almost Christmas. It should be cold,” Emily says matter-of-factly.

“Oh, yeah.” Scully grins mischievously. “John and Monica had some stuff for you guys.”

Seconds later, the kids are decked out on the floor, and Emily is helping William unwrap a bright red box. “I’m glad we could do this, at least,” Mulder says. “Thank you. I wanted them to have a good Christmas.”

Scully leans into his side. “I’m just glad we’re together. That’s enough for me, and you have no idea how much it means to the kids.”

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

She leans into it gratefully. “I’m glad to be home.”

He doesn’t point out that they don’t have a home right now. They are each other’s home.


	4. Christmas 2007

Scully sends a text to his burner phone sometime before lunch - which is unusual for her, because she normally works long shifts - saying, _Come outside - and be subtle about it! Don’t bring the kids._ Mulder can only assume the worst.

The kids are sprawled out in the living room - William in front of the TV, engrossed in reruns of _The Twilight Zone_ , Emily lying on the couch with one of his old psychology textbooks that Skinner had smuggled in from their brief apartment. (When he’d caught her thumbing through the bookshelf in his office, she’d shrugged and said, “I’m out of things to read. Can’t afford to be picky.”) The Christmas tree that William had convinced the rest of the family to cut down is in the corner, plugged in. (Emily gave it her seal of approval. She still has nightmares sometimes about her first parents, but the prospect of a Christmas tree doesn’t bother her near as much as it used to.) “Shouldn’t you guys be doing your home school work?” Mulder asks, raising an eyebrow in a near perfect Scully imitation. (He’s been working on it, he’s living with three Scullys, he has to do something to survive.)

“If we were in normal school, we’d be on Christmas vacation,” Emily points out, not looking up from her book.

“Yeah, Dad!” William adds defensively, resting his chin in his hands.

They’ve figured out exactly what buttons to push to get out of stuff - one of their biggest regrets as parents is how isolated the kids are. ( _It’s to keep them safe_ , he’d said to Scully the year William would’ve started kindergarten. _That doesn’t make me feel better_ , she’d replied.) He sighs, and starts pulling on his boots. “Just remember that it’s not me you’re dealing with - it’s your mom.”

“Where are you going, Dad? To look for the Abominable Snowman?” William turns to face him, lighting up with excitement.

“Sorry, Will. Actually I was planning on shoveling the driveway,” Mulder says casually, smirking at them.

It gets the desired reaction - William scrunches down, face turning red. In turn, Emily mutters, “Sh- crap. _Crap_ ,” looking up in a panic immediately after to see if he noticed. He can hear the subsequent argument - “You said a _bad word_.” “ _Almost_ , Will _._ Almost!” - as he leaves the house.

Scully and her car wait a good way up the blatantly unshoveled driveway. She looks grumpy, braid frizzing out from under a knit cap Emily had given her for her last birthday (static electricity, he supposes). “Weren’t the kids supposed to shovel the driveway?” she grumbles.

“Scully, as a Massachusetts kid, I can easily say that shoveling this really long driveway is cruel and unusual punishment.” He kisses her chilled cheek.

She grunts in annoyance, but turns to kiss him fully. “You know what the real cruel and unusual punishment is? Walking down this really long driveway through the snow.”

“Which you made me do, and haven’t told me why yet.” He tugs on her scarf. “What’s up, Scully?”

She opens her mouth, but a loud sound emits from the car before she can say anything. Seconds later, a furry face pokes its way out of the open window, panting eagerly at them.

Mulder blinks at her with something not unlike surprise. “You got a dog.”

“It’s a Christmas present for the kids,” Scully says, almost defensively. “They need something to do, being stuck out here all the time…”

“And you think a _dog_ is the right solution?”

“It's not the wrong solution.” She crosses her arms and pouts perceptibly. “Come on, Mulder. I've missed Queequeg for years, and I’ve been wanting a dog ever since we've settled down.”

Between her and the kids, he gets a fair amount of strategic guilt trips. He needs to learn that technique. “You couldn't have gotten a cat?” he grumbles, reaching down to scratch the dog on the head. “I _like_ cats.”

“You would,” Scully says, choosing this moment to yank the door open. The dog leaps out, jumping on Scully first and making her giggle before coming over to inspect Mulder. He scratches his head awkwardly.

“I named him Fedallah,” Scully says, grabbing the leash that’s dragging in the snow and tugging the dog away from Mulder. “After a harpooner in _Moby Dick_. The kids should enjoy that, right?”

Scully has read _Moby Dick_ to the kids multiple times - once to Emily when she was four or five, once on the run when William was too young to understand it, and once a couple of years ago, when Emily had mentioned that she was “too big” for reading with her mom and brother, but who had still climbed in bed next to them every night to listen. “Emily will definitely appreciate it,” Mulder says knowingly. “William will want to name it Poltergeist or something.” Which isn't a bad name, he might add.

“He’ll appreciate it when he’s older.” Scully and the dog - Fedallah - start moving down the path.

Mulder follows. “You know what’s a good, simple name for a dog, Scully? Spot.”

“Spot’s cliché,” she says. “Queequeg and Fedallah - now _those_ are original. Besides, Fedallah doesn’t have any spots.”

He studies the solidly-brown dog, who is panting eagerly and wagging his tail, huddled close to Scully. “Rover is also acceptable,” he points out.

Fedallah scales the steps to the porch excitedly and throws himself against the door. William rounds the corner at the sound and yanks the screen door open, face lighting up. “A dog!” He drops to his knees and throws his arms around the dog's neck.

Emily is right between him, gasping, “Whoa!” when she sees the animal in the doorway. She crouches besides William, scratching Fedallah’s head. He thumps his tail in a satisfied response. “Did you do this?” she asks, looking up at them.

Scully grins, sitting down with the three of them on the porch. “Merry Christmas, guys.” William grins back and scuttles along the floorboards to hug his mother.

“Just so we're clear, I had nothing to do with this,” Mulder says, moving into the house because it is way too cold to be outside, dog or no dog. “This was all your mother.”

Will tugs his pants leg as he moves past. “Why not, Dad? Don't you like dogs?” he asks in that sweet voice he has that never works on Scully and always works on Mulder.

He's about to say that _of course_ he likes dogs when Scully answers for him. “No, he doesn't,” she says in a mischievous stage whisper. “He let my dog get eaten by an alligator once.”

“Dad!” William says, outraged. Emily is rubbing Fedallah’s stomach and trying not to laugh; she's heard this story a few times. The dog is kicking his legs wildly.

Mulder sighs exaggeratedly. “First of all, it was _not_ an alligator.”

“We _saw_ the alligator, Mulder! It was found responsible for the deaths.”

“That doesn't necessarily mean the alligator ate Queequeg. You never saw what ate him. It could’ve been Big Blue.”

“Big Blue?” William asks, eyes wide with his usual “is-it-a-monster” fascination. “What's that?”

“A sea monster,” Emily says. “I mean lake monster - sorry, Mulder. He lives in Georgia and… eats dogs, apparently,” she adds in a whisper, covering Fedallah’s ears.

“No, he does not, because he doesn't exist,” Scully says firmly.

“Does he exist, Dad?” William asks, resting his chin on the dog's back.

“ _I_ think so.”

“Although there have been previous evidence of some kinds of… sea monster kind of mutant in certain parts of the world, the likelihood of something like the Loch Ness Monster living in a touristy part of the world - a small lake, no less - where there's already an indicated predator responsible, is miniscule,” Emily says. She high-fives Scully proudly.

“No more of your mom's textbooks,” Mulder says. “You’re getting too smart for us.”

“Althoooooough,” Emily adds, smirking and adjusting her glasses. “There is a greater possibility of a sea monster in the wider span of the ocean, which covers such a wide span of the Earth that it would be impossible to chart every creature… much like how the possibility of extraterrestrial beings is strengthened by the fact that we can never fully comprehend the mysteries of the universe.” She high-fives Mulder, who is more than satisfied with his daughter’s knowledge in this monologue. Scully looks irritable.

William looks between the three of them. “Space is cool, you guys are confusing, and I think Big Blue is real. What's the dog's name, Mom?”

“Fedallah.”

“ _Moby Dick,_ right?” Emily says knowingly.

“What else?”

///

Within the next few days, Fedallah is dubbed Fed, mainly by William, but Emily deems it appropriate. (“Cause you guys were Feds, and we're… what? Fed spawn?” is her leading defense. “It’s like we’re initiating him into the family.”)

(Technically, they are all outlaws now, wanted by the government they used to work for and poison in the same breath. They never say it in any certain terms, but Mulder knows his children know. They are perceptive kids, and William stopped asking about going to school years ago.)

On Christmas Eve, Mulder wanders outside to take Fed out and finds William and Scully sitting on the front step, wrapped in blankets. “Hi, Dad!” Will says excitedly, gesturing for him to come and sit. “Mom's showing me space stuff.”

“Really?” He sinks down on the steps beside them, letting Fed run free in the yard and stealing part of their blanket. Scully leans into him unconscuously “Stars are nice,” he remarks. “You can't see this many in the city.”

“Then I never want to go to the city,” William says, shivering. Scully smiles, presses a kiss to his hair.

Mulder loves how much their son loves space. In another life, he could see himself in his son - less obsessive, no government conspiracies, just stars and planets and non-abductor aliens.

(In another life, he thinks more darkly, William’s space aspirations might be more achievable. They do not know if their names will ever be cleared. William may never get the chance to go to college, may never get the chance to change the world.)

“Do you remember the constellations?” Scully is asking William.

“ _Duh,_ ” he says firmly, hand stretching up to the sky. “There's Ursa Major and the Big Dipper. And the North Star.”

“It's freezing out here,” Emily says, stepping out on the porch and rubbing her arms. “We looking for Santa?”

“ _Stars_ , Em,” William says. “And also aliens.”

Fed comes running up to the steps, throwing his body against Mulder's legs and resting his chin on Scully's knee eagerly. Scully scratches his head. Mulder presses a kiss to her forehead. “Ewwww,” Will groans, leaning away from his parents.

Unable to resist messing with his kids, he pokes his son in the side. “Hey Will, do you know what the brightest star in the sky is?” he teases. “Your mom.”

William makes a gagging sound.

“Actually, it's Sirius A, or The Dog Star,” Emily says. Fed lifts his head up in interest. “And Will, you should be grateful that they're this way, you know. Back when I was a little kid, they basically acted like this except they weren't actually together and it was weird.”

“Hey!” Scully protests.

“And they wouldn't actually _admit_ how they felt for a super long time. It was stupid.” Emily smiles sweetly at them, sitting down on the other side of Mulder.

He sighs begrudgingly and kisses the top of her head. “It was _not_ stupid. I told your mother I loved her and she didn't say anything, so I think the bite is off of me.”

“Well, _to be fair_ …” Scully says, exasperated. “If you'd clued in to my hints, we would've been together a lot sooner.”

“What hints?”

She throws up her hands, nearly whacking William in the head. “The _entire first six years_ of our relationship?”

“Also you kissed him that one time right in front of me,” Emily adds.

“So they've always been this gross?” William asks.

Mulder wraps his arm around Scully's shoulders in an attempt to ward off the cold. “We have never been gross.”

William grumbles his disagreement to this, leaning his head back on Scully's shoulder to look up at the sky.

“You’re right, we’ve never been gross,” Scully whispers. He smiles, and leans his head to rest on top of hers. The four of them watch the stars in silence.

 


	5. Christmas 2012

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should mention that this turned out waaaaaay angstier than i expected and references death a lot? but it has a happy ending, i can promise you that.

It's the last day of the world. The day of the apocalypse.

_Supposed_ apocalypse, joke the newscasters on TV. William comments on the Mayan calendar at breakfast, and Mulder grimaces. He wants to keep the kids home from school, but Scully stops him with a hand on his arm in the hallway. “We don't want to freak them out,” she says quietly, sadly. “Besides, it could be the last time they see these people; we can't take that away from them.” She rubs his arm in what is probably intended to be a soothing motion. “It's only for a few hours.”

His mind is full of fires and floods and alien ships on the horizon. “What if it starts when they're at school?”

“I'll stay close to the school,” she says. “I'll get them out.”

Mulder pulls her close, burying his nose in her hair. “I don't want you to leave,” he mumbles. “I don't want them to leave, either.” They could've fought years ago, but their chance is gone, and all he wants now is for them to be together, here at the end.

“I know,” she says, kissing the underside of his chin. “I know. Come with me, and we can be ready if it starts early.”

The house has seemed like a safe haven ever since they moved in - the FBI had never found them here, they'd had to find Scully and go through her. He hates for any of them to leave it for too long; it had been difficult to send Emily and William off to school (the first time, for William, and the first time in years for Emily) in 2008. He wants them here, wants to monitor the news and Internet, has the idea that they'll be safer here. “Okay,” he says.

The kids seem confused as to why Mulder's riding along, but not suspicious. Emily’s groaning about college applications and AP finals, and William’s playing a video game. Christmas carols are on the radio, and it doesn't feel like the end of the world aside from the clouds blanketing the sky and blocking the sun.

After dropping off the kids, they park next to the schools, immediately flipping on the radio. Scully reaches across the console to take his hand, pulling it into her lap.

He hadn’t told her at first. He didn’t see the point. When they’d been on the run and in hiding, it had seemed okay, not telling her. Like things couldn’t get any worse, like maybe they’d be able to outrun the inevitable if they were already running. And it’s hard to keep secrets in a hotel room, and he didn’t want Emily to know. When they first moved into the house, it’d seemed just as futile, because what could they do? Fight the aliens? He was a fugitive father who couldn’t save his kids and he hated himself for that, but there was nothing to do. He’d checked every last lead, and no one knew it was coming. The Consortium covered their tracks well.

He’d told Scully during the investigation for Monica Bannan. It had been exactly the wrong time to do it because of the stress already on them, but it had seemed right, with him being pardoned by the FBI. She’d been mad, mad enough to sleep on the couch, mad enough to walk off the case, which had led to his subsequent head injury and hypothermia. (He’d always been more impulsive, more danger prone, without her, or so it seemed.) It’d been before the death of Dakota Whitney as well, which hadn’t helped assuage either of their guilt. It was bad, and he’d been questioning whether she’d ever forgive him, but she’d come to him in his hospital room, taken his hand and said, “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me years ago. But we still have time. We can fight this.” And it had been months before the tension between them had dissipated, but he’d known they’d be okay, then.

But there had been, quite literally, nothing to fight. Scully pulled every string she had - talked to Doggett and Reyes and Skinner, called or emailed every one of Mulder’s living former contacts, as well as the Gunmen’s (she’d even managed to dig up Susanne Modeski after all these years), even tried to get them reinstated to the FBI. Every lead was dried up, and there was no way to know what was coming, how it was coming, or how to fight up.

So they’d given up. Somewhat, but not completely, because they’ve never been people to accept defeat. On New Year’s Day, 2012, Scully had taken Mulder out to the car and shown how she’d had it modified to store supplies - hollowing out the seats, building a compartment in the floor. It would be good for traveling, trying to escape Armageddon, he supposed. “We'll outrun it if we can't fight it,” she said, wrapping an arm around his waist and burying her face in his side. “I’m not losing you or the kids.”

She squeezes his hand now, encouragingly, reassuringly. “I'm going to step out and call my mother, okay?” she says. “I'll be right outside.” _I promise._

Maggie is in San Diego with Bill and Tara and Matthew, which is where they decided they'll head when it starts, in a small attempt to save them. (“Why don’t you just ask them to come here?” he’d asked her, and she’d sighed and said, “Because Bill will argue about tradition, and it’ll make things complicated, and I don’t know. They’ll want to know why the plans have changed or they just won’t come at all. This is fucking hard, Mulder. I don’t know how to deal with this.” She’d cried into a bathroom towel and he’d held her.)

He nods and kisses her knuckles. He's not going to be able to stop touching her today, he can tell. “Be careful, okay?” he says thickly.

“I'll be right outside,” she repeats, strokes his cheek a little like she's not going to be able to stop touching him either, kisses his forehead. “Maybe it won't happen. today,” she adds as an afterthought. “Maybe it's a red herring. We could come out of this okay.”

God, he hopes so.

He flips on the radio as she leaves the car. He can hear the muffled tremble in her voice through the window as she talks to her mother. She's about to cry. He turns up the radio. She gets back in the car on his side and crawls onto his lap, burying her face against his neck.

///

“Dad? Are you okay?” Emily asks, sitting across from him at the kitchen table.

Emily and Scully are alike in that they call him anything besides Mulder sparingly. Scully has called him Fox a total of four times ever. Emily calls him “Dad” more often - the first time she did it she was thirteen, and it was after he got home from the hospital in 2008, and she'd thundered through the house to hug him at the door and said in all her teenager-y glory, “ _Jesus_ , Dad, you have to be more careful” against his collarbone as she hugged him a little too tightly for his bruises. (He hadn’t minded.) She's mostly called him Mulder since then - ten years can't go away that easily - but she calls him Dad sometimes, usually when she can tell something’s wrong.

He tries to smile at her and tousles her bright hair. “I'm fine, kiddo.”

Emily raises an eyebrow. “I don't believe that.”

“You should.”

“Hey, Will, tell Dad to tell me the truth!” Emily calls.

William wanders into the kitchen, overgrown hair sticking out and phone (that Mulder had bought him, keeping the apocalypse in mind) in hand. Grabbing a loaf of bread and a package of ham from the fridge, he says, “You should, Dad. You're always going on about the truth,” without taking his eyes off the screen.

_And look where it got me_. “You don't need to worry, Em,” he says truthfully, sliding an arm around her slim shoulders and hugging her. “You've got more important things to think about then this.” He kisses the top of her head. “College applications, remember?” _If there’s any colleges left_ , he thinks involuntarily, and grimaces inwardly.

She shrugs him off, grinning, but when she turns back to face him, her face is serious. “Promise you'll talk to someone if it's bad?” she asks. “Mom, or… or someone? I know how it can get bad.”

She’s had nightmares ever since he’s known her - a mark the Consortium left on all of them, really. “Okay,” he says, hugging her briefly again.

“Wait, what _is_ going on?” Sandwich forgotten, William comes over to join him, blue eyes wide and worried and so Scully-like it makes Mulder's stomach hurt. “ _Are_ you okay, Dad? You guys are scaring me.”

“I'm fine, Will.” He wraps his arms tightly around his son next, a rare display of affection due to William’s grumpy pre-teen years. “I just love you guys.”

When William doesn't protest the hug or call him corny or overly sentimental, he can tell that he's doing a terrible job of hiding his panic.

///

Nothing has happened after dinner. The meal is a mostly quiet affair, with Emily and William doing most of the talking. Scully tries to join in, but it's all half-hearted. Mulder just watches. He wants to remember this.

After dinner, they end up in the living room watching _It's A Wonderful Life._ “Hey, Mom, you remember when I was a little kid and hated this movie?” Emily asks, lying on her stomach on the floor.

“I do. I'm glad you like it better now,” Scully says, smiling, looking like she’s remembering it. She strokes Mulder’s thumb with her own.

Mulder remembers that first Christmas, a tiny Emily snuggled between them, Scully moving his car keys out of his reach and her mouth brushing softly against his hair. The memory wells up inside him and makes his throat hurt.

William is sprawled out next to Emily, using a sleeping Fed as a pillow. “So you've been forcing your kids to watch this for years? This isn't a new thing?” he asks sleepily, voice muffled by dog fur.

“For your information, I used to watch this every Christmas Eve when I was a kid, with my family.” Scully starts the statement out in a strong, joking tone but it falters, her voice eventually cracking on the world _family._ Mulder wraps both arms around her from behind, burying his face in her hair, and she leans into him unconsciously. He doesn't let go of her for the entirety of the movie.

By the end, William and Emily are both asleep on the floor, black-and-white light flickering over their faces. Looking at them, memories beat against the back of Mulder’s eyelids - of Emily at four, arms wrapped around his thighs and eyes bright; at seven, barreling down a dark road with arms outstretched to hug him because he'd been gone for months, and he was her dad, and she missed him; at ten with gawky new glasses; thirteen, and a total smart-ass, but crazy intelligence layered on top of the snark; fifteen and nervous about driving for the first time, hands trembling on the wheel. And Will. William, their miracle baby; the three days Mulder had spent with his son before he had to leave for ten months; William toddling around hotel rooms in the footprints of strangers, and William crying for his mother, for Emily, for Grandma, for almost everyone but his father, until one night when they’d been alone in a hotel room, when he'd just wailed, “Daddy!” repeatedly until Mulder had come and scooped him up and he'd calmed with his face buried against his neck, clinging to Mulder like a barnacle on a rock; William curled in his lap, staring at books with wide, curious eyes and asking about monsters; William at eight with him and Scully in the backyard, asking about the stars; William in his undeniable curiosity, his and Scully’s creation. He sees a million years in their faces, his entire world.

And Scully. His partner, love of his life, mother of his children. Scully in 1993, laughing in the rain; Scully in 1996, hands frighteningly steady as they aimed a gun at him; Scully in 1999, telling him that he was Emily’s father; Scully pushing him away in 2001 and Scully pulling him back (and never letting go) in 2002; Scully in the passenger seat, lights traveling over her face as she tells him to pull over and let her drive already because he looks like he’s already asleep; Scully on the other side of the bed, rolling against him and muttering something into his neck. Loving Scully, and her loving him back. It will never stop being incredible to him.

She falls asleep against him, and he doesn't want to be asleep for this, he wants to be ready, and there's so much left to say, but the crushing weight of sleep comes over him like the curtain at the end of the play - the fall, and then darkness.

///

He wakes up to a burning scent, which is briefly terrifying until he opens his eyes and sees the sunlight streaming into the room and Scully asleep against him and then: “Dad,” William says impatiently. “ _Dad_. Emily burned the eggs.”

Mulder lifts his head, blinking at William in confusion. “Wha-” he mutters groggily.

“The eggs, Dad.” Will turns and rushes towards the kitchen, motioning for Mulder to follow him.

_The world didn't end_ , he thinks dizzily, and after lowering Scully back against the couch cushions gently, he follows William into the kitchen. Emily is scraping blackened eggs into the trash, glasses shoved on top of her head and hair knotted back in a way that Scully must’ve taught her. “Sorry, Mulder,” she says sheepishly. “We tried.”

“And look who managed not to burn the bacon,” William says smugly. “ _Or_ the toast.”

“Shut up, I’m the only one who knows how to make eggs between the two of us.”

Mulder smiles, uncontrollably, like a car barreling down a hill or the way he kisses Scully sometimes. “You know what, Em, I'm so starved that I'll eat the whole pan.” He grins wider. “Thanks, guys. This is really thoughtful of you.”

Emily grins, then gives the charred eggs a look. “I'll try again,” she says finally. “I’m not eating burned eggs; it’s gross.”

“Maybe open a window?” Mulder calls, turning back towards the living room. He wants to hug his kids close, revel in the fact that they're not dead and they're not going to die, but they're at the age where hugging is uncertain so he won't. He has the rest of his life to hug his kids. The world didn’t end.

Scully’s already awake, standing at the window, staring out in quiet amazement with the knit blanket draped around her shoulders. “Scully,” he says softly, coming out behind her and pressing his palm to the small of her back. “The world didn't end.”

She turns and presses against him, kisses him fiercely, uncontrollably like his smile, with her hand cupping his jaw. “No, it didn't,” she whispers, pressing her face into his shoulder.

He hugs her more fully, pulling the blanket around them both and pressing his nose to her hairline, breathing in her shampoo. “Mulder,” she whispers, shaking in his arms. He can't tell if she's laughing or crying. “We're alive. The kids… my mom, my brother…”

He kisses her hair, her forehead, her mouth. “The kids made breakfast, Scully,” he says, feeling all the melancholy panic, the overhanging shadow of the day before fall away. The apocalypse might come back, but it wasn't yesterday and they are alive. _They are alive._ “We're going to be okay.”


End file.
